The Worst U.S. Airports for Flight Delays

The final air travel numbers for 2016 are in, and the results won’t surprise anyone. While flights in general are getting more punctual, some of the most delayed airports in the U.S. are New York’s perennial trio of laggards: JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia.

According to a report from the Global Gateway Alliance, a group of civic leaders pushing for improvements in the Big Apple’s airports, LaGuardia finished dead last in arrival performance of the top 29 airports, with 28 percent—or one third—of flights arriving late. (Silver lining: This is slightly better than 2015, when 29 percent were tardy.) And last year, Newark had the worst on-time departure record, with one out of four flights delayed; that too, was a tiny improvement over 2015. JFK did slightly better than the other two, but still landed in the bottom five in on-time arrivals. Delay information was sourced from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and analyzed on a year-to-date basis for 2016.

In contrast, the airports at the top of the pack all posted an on-time performance rate of at least 80 percent: Salt Lake City, with an 87 percent on-time record for both arriving and departing flights, scored the highest. Atlanta, the busiest airport in the world, came in second for on-time arrivals, with 86 percent of flights sticking to schedule. For departures overall, the top five was rounded out by Portland (86 percent), Seattle (85.5 percent), Minneapolis (85 percent), and Detroit (84 percent). For arrivals, the five best also included Detroit, Charlotte, and Minneapolis, all with punctuality rankings over 84 percent. The full list can be found here.

New York’s got company at the bottom of the list, of course, as LAX and San Francisco International landed in the lowest rung, too. But what is it about New York that keeps travelers stuck in a holding pattern?

In a sense, it’s a perverse tribute to New York’s importance as an aviation hub: its airspace is the busiest in the U.S., and the proximity of its airports to one another—JFK and LGA are just eight miles apart—only adds to the complexity of managing the airspace. The airports are also booming; last year, traffic at the three airfields totaled nearly 130 million passengers, according to data from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. JFK alone has added around 10 million annual passengers in the past three years.

As a result, airport construction is also booming, with LGA in the midst of a massive rebuilding project—the cause of yet more headaches for put-upon passengers—and JFK in line for a multi-billion dollar facelift. But Global Gateway Alliance Chairman Joe Sitt says that these projects, while welcome, will do little to solve the problem of flight delays, “other than (making) our airports nicer places to get stuck in.”

Many are expecting the Federal Aviation Administration to get the necessary funding to push ahead with its air traffic modernization program this year, which should allow more planes to safely occupy the same airspace. “The FAA must finally fully roll out NextGen satellite air traffic technology where it's most needed; the New York airspace, and we have to look at how to expand runways to alleviate the chronic congestion," says Sitt. Adding runways, however, typically takes years, if not decades, to pull off, due to opposition from local residents on environmental grounds. Looks like New Yorkers are in for a long ride.